Nine.

I got my passport and rail pass out today.  I could have left them in their little home for eight more days, presumably.  It's not that I'm so organized that I have a check-off schedule that says "Nine days remaining:  retrieve passport and rail pass."  The real reason's a bit simpler of course:

My sometime next-door neighbors and normally full-time residents of Tokyo and I are, I hope, about to decide to meet one day at a Tea Garden somewhere between Tokyo and Kyoto.  Although I'm not sure exactly what the term "Tea Garden" means, it sounds very nice and it combines two of my favorite things, both way ahead of whiskers on kittens and bright copper kettles.

Come on, Maria, really?

  All the pictures I can find on the web of "tea gardens" appear to be situated in California, and while I have special affection for California in many ways, and I love the fact that there is Grand Japanese Influence in parts of it, I am just a trifle skeptical of a "Japanese Tea Garden" in a place that gave us avocados in our sushi.  I hope you'll pardon me for this bit of hysteria.  For now I just want my Japan to be in, you know, Japan.

So that's good, anyway, because it will be a surprise and I won't really know what a true Japanese Tea Garden, or at least this particular one, is until I go there.  I am however told reliably that they are willing to part with their tea in exchange for yen.

So, passports and Tea Gardens.  Considerations for Japan minus nine.

And, oh! Grazie, Italian person, whoever you are!  My first non-USA visitor.   Benvenuta or Benvenuto, as the case may be.